New York and Washington, D.C.: MEPs attended UN CSW and discussed women’s rights

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament.

On 6-9 March, a delegation of the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee attended the UN Commission on the Status of Women and held meetings in Washington, D.C. on women’s rights.

Led by the Chair Robert Biedroń, the delegation attended the 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and held bilateral meetings with representatives of the UN, the EU, member states and civil society on 6-8 March 2023 in New York.

The CSW67 focusses this year on innovation, technological change and on education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The delegation then travelled to Washington, D.C., where MEPs held meetings with representatives of the US administration, the US Congress and civil society on women’s rights on 9 March 2023.

Subjects that were touched upon during all of the delegation’s meetings in the US were:

• the priority theme of the CSW67: participation of women in the digital economy, development of artificial intelligence in a gender non-biased way, combating cyberviolence, and education and empowerment of women and girls in the STEM sector;
• how to combat the global backlash against women’s rights, access to sexual and reproductive health and rights including safe and legal abortion, sexual violence in conflict and use of rape as weapon of war, the fight against gender based violence, including cyberviolence, as well as sexuality and relationship education for boys, and EU bilateral and multilateral cooperation to advance gender equality and women’s rights.

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Robert Biedroń (S&D, Poland), said: “EU and UN priorities and concerns are the same in the area of gender equality and women’s rights. In light of the current backlash against gender equality across the EU and worldwide, our common actions and joint forces are needed more than ever. We need to standardise women’s rights at international level. The EU wants to lead by example by denouncing this backlash, by empowering women and girls in all their diversity and achieving gender equality in the digital transformation.

We need to build an inclusive digital economy and combat gender-based cyberviolence. Everything that is illegal offline must be illegal online. At our meetings in New York, we discussed the negotiations of the conclusions of the CSW67 and we hope they will be strong, will not water down already achieved progress on women’s rights and will combine a development and a human rights approach.

In our meetings in Washington D.C., we expressed our position that sexual and reproductive health and rights are fundamental human rights which must be protected and we expressed our firm solidarity with and support for women and girls in the US.”

You can check the delegation’s full programme here.

Members participating in the delegation were:

Robert Biedroń (S&D, Poland), Head of the delegation

Frances Fitzgerald (EPP, Ireland)

Sirpa Pietikäinen (EPP, Finland)

Evelyn Regner (S&D, Austria)

Heléne Fritzon (S&D, Sweden)

María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos (Renew, Spain)

Monika Vana (Greens/EFA, Austria)